Not that long ago, I was seriously looking at my life and trying to decide what I want to do with it. I asked a dear friend of mine "what is the difference between having faith and being foolish?"
She began to laugh while taking a long, contemplative drag off the joint in her hand, looked me square in the eyes and said, "The person with faith jumps off the cliff... and the other one falls off!" We both immediately started laughing but I was hit with the feeling that there is much more to what she said. It was such a simple answer to what seemed like a profound question, yet it actually had a lot of depth.
Being raised in a fundamentalist religion and then leaving it in young adulthood has made me very wary to anything that seems to require "faith." It's easy to see how the idea of faith is used as an indoctrination and manipulation tactic by controlling religions. If good things are happening to you it's because of your faith and if bad things are happening to you it's because of your lack of faith. Either way you can't quite be sure how your faith is actually working, it just is or it isn't. If you have doubts then you have little faith. If you ask no questions and blindly accept the dogma that's a good thing and means you have faith! But in reality you are simply open to being indoctrinated. God moves in mysterious ways, after all. And if you would just have faith the size of a mustard seed you could move mountains! But all I knew growing up was that I wasn't moving mountains with my prayers and I also didn't lack effort in trying to cultivate my faith.
I asked this question because I was wrestling with the decision to quit my day job and to pursue my dream of building a coaching practice. I knew I had a feeling I could make it work. I clearly felt excited about making this change and my mind ran endlessly looking at the possibilities. When I thought about staying in my job I clearly felt my body contract and I felt closed off and limited. So I knew I felt like taking the leap of faith, yet my mind was dutifully playing it's role of being the logical, reasonable, and practical part of myself. It was telling me that it would be foolish to quit my only source of reliable income. So... is having faith being foolish?
I started thinking back on all the times I knew I wanted to make a big change in my life but I didn't let myself do it. It was easy to see how every time I was in a job I didn't like and didn't let myself quit, I actually brought about the circumstances needed to get myself out of that job. But not in a healthy way. As I continued to stay in jobs that didn't make me happy, I progressively became more irritable, late for work, generally negative to be around, and my overall performance would decrease. I would become involved in office gossip and rumors and look for any opportunity to reinforce my narrative of "this job sucks!" Ultimately, this lead to me getting fired... more than once. I realized that this was falling off of the cliff. This was being foolish.
It's been my experience that I have always known when a change is needed in my life. It's also been my experience that if the change seems too big and risky I've allowed myself to come up with justifications for not making that change. I allowed myself to talk myself out of making the change, telling myself that I'm actually being reasonable and practical. This is an issue because every single one of those changes I knew I needed to make ended up happening anyway. Even though I never quit those jobs, I still left them. I see now that I could have jumped off the cliff, taken that leap of faith and went over the edge on my terms, but instead I stumbled right up the edge and swayed there until I fell. When we know there is a change that must take place, it might be because it will take place one way or another. It's up to us to decide if we're jumping or if we're going to wait until we fall, either way we're going over the edge. Life moves quickly and it's our job to keep up. It's continually changing and evolving and if we aren't willing to do the same it's my opinion we will be left feeling unhappy and dissatisfied. I encourage you to take an honest look at the changes you know need to happen in your life and look at how you're keeping yourself from letting them happen. Are you swaying at the edge of a cliff waiting to fall? It might be more fun to jump.
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